Scene energy and Jemena perfection!!!
Scene energy is my embedded network work. It is a retailer of electricity for my town house and Jemena is the wholesaler for the whole complex.
Now normally the process of approval for solar panels and home battery installation so that we can export the excess electricity back to the grid on average around 1 week to 10 days at most.
My solar panels and battery installer submitted all required papers back on 11th May 2026 and we book installation for 6th July 2026 just in case delaying in application.
Well it is now 9th July, we had to cancel the original installation date and still waiting for approval. Between the 2 useless companies, they managed to take almost 2 months worth and still no answer. My installer called scene energy and Jemena they blamed each other. All because Jemena required scene energy to pay extra fee which they can't recroup that cost, they tried everything to avoid that for the last almost 8 weeks. Yet when myself or the installer called, scene energy blame Jemena and vice versa.
My installer now resubmit an application which asking the wholesaler to exclude my property from exporting to the grid, so that it would get approve quickly. Vic solar rebate emailed last week advising that the rebate must be used by August otherwise I would need to reapply. This rebate was approved back in April 2026.
As you can see, words alone can not describe how inefficient, ineffective and useless both companies are. If they managed to take roughly 10 to 12 weeks to approve one single application then a year worth of their applications approval would be about 5 applications max. I don't know what is the total solar panels and battery installation number in Victoria is but it would be around minimum 70 000 per year. Now take this into account, the clowns at both scene energy and Jemena took more than 7 weeks for my approval and still going, you can see how useless their departments in dealing with solar panels and battery application. If i have a stand alone house, it should have been easier as i can change retailer/s but unfortunately i got stuck with the useless scene energy then compounded by the useless Jemena. These 2 has a synergistic effect of useless. Hence we are where we are now.
I asked scene energy as to when the application would be approve, just a time frame, they couldn't give me an answer. They replied all depends on Jemena. When i call Jemena, the answer is the same but this time "it is all depends on scene energy" my application might be approve by spring 2026 or might even be Christmas 2026, maybe even new year 2027, no one knows!! If anyone applying for solar panels and battery through scene energy and/or Jemena, you might want to hold off applying for solar rebate and installation dates. As they might take any where between 5 days to 5 months or even longer as they generally only able to approve maybe 5 to max 7 applications per year out of a total of 70 000 installations in Victoria.